Developmental Psychology

Chapter 1: The Life-Span Perspective

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Development is lifelong: No age period dominates development Multidimensional: Development consist of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes, even within a process (cognition), various components such as opportunity, internalization, place a role Multidirectional: Some dimensions increase and some dimensions shrink, two languages early, less language later on, older is more wise with intellectual decision making, but slow processing speed Plastic: the capacity for change, reasoning abilities of older adults were improved through training, possibly we have less capacity for change when we are older, neuroplasticity and neuropsychology have developed around this concept Multidiscinipilinary: What constraints on intelligence are set by the individuals heredity and health status? How universal are cognitive and socio-emotional changes? How do environmental contexts influence intellectual development? How are different fields related Growth, Maintenance, and Regulation: Mystery of life is between growth, maintenance, and regulation. As middle and late adulthood emerges, maintenance and regulation take stage away from growth. 70-year old woman may not improve tennis shot but continues to paly to maintain her independence. The goal to grow different capacities help maintain it and minimize deterioration Co-construction of biology, culture, and the individual: Factors working together, brain shapes and interprets culture, also is shaped by culture and experiences, we go beyond what our genetic inheritance and environment gives us Contextual: All development occurs within a context or setting, ex families, socio-economic status, schools, peer groups, churches, cities,

neighborhoods, university laboratories, countries, etc., contexts can also change like individuals, contexts exert different types of influences Normative Age-Graded Influences: Similar for individuals in a particular age group, include puberty and menopause (biological processes), include socio-cultural, environmental processes (formal education) and retirement Normative History-Graded Influences: Common to people from a particular generation because of historical circumstances in their youth NA baby boomers shared the experience of the separatist movement in Quebec, trudeau-mania, Beatles invasion, can be economic, political, and social upheavals such as the war in Afghanistan, integration of computers and cellphones into daily life, floods are shaping the countries and cultural legacy and lives of individuals of that time Non-Normative Life Events: Occurrences which are not anticipated but have a major impact on an individuals life, a parent unexpectedly dies while a child is young, winning the lottery, career opportunities with special privileges, understanding this role is focusing on how people adapt to them Life-expectancy: The average age a child born in a given year can expect to live to, CONTEXT plays a vital role because context determines access to water, hygiene, health care, and social services. A FACTOR OF CONTEXT: Wiping out everyone AIDS is a pandemic in Africa, An individuals expectations, goals, motivations, and general understanding of the world are shaped by the opportunities and challenges of their environments. Median age: The age at which half the population is older than the half is younger. 2006 39.5. Canadas median age is the third highest after the united states and Russia, increase in median age is the decrease in fertility rate. 2.1 reproduction rate is important to sustain a population. Babyboomers: One in four individuals will be 65 in 2056. Born in between 1944 to 1964, more seniors are living on their own rather than in health care

facilities, we will have more retirees, a smaller workforce, fewer preschool and school-age children Socio-economic Status (SES): Major contextual influence, poverty is a great inhibitor of growth because of access to health services and recreational and educational programs are limited. PAUL BALTES: Multidimensional, multidirectional, multidisciplinary, plastic, contextual, concerned with growth, maintenance and regulation, and coconstruct biology, culture, and the individual Developmental Processes and Periods Biological, Cognitive & Socio-emotional Processes -Biological processes: Produce changes in an individuals physical nature, genes inherited from parents, development of the brain, height and weight, motor skills, hormonal changes, etc. -Cognitive processes: Refer to changes in the individuals thought, intelligence, and language, watching colorful mobile swinging above the crib, putting together sentences, memorizing a poem, imagining, solving crossword puzzles -Socio-emotional processes: Involve changes in the individuals relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality, infants smile to a mothers touch, aggressive attack, concern, joy at senior prom. ALL THESE ARE BI-DIRECTIONAL, each influence each other Periods of Development: Refer to the time frames in life that are characterized b certain features: Prenatal: the from conception to birth, involves tremendous growth, cell to organism with behavior, brain, and takes 9 months Infancy: Developmental period from birth to 18 or 24 months, extreme dependence on adults, many psychological activities are just beginning, language symbolic thought, sensorimotor coordination and social learning, etc.

Early Childhood: Period extending from the end of infancy to 5-6 years, pre-school years, learn to become self-sufficient and develop school readiness skills, spend hours playing with peers, end is GRADE 1 Middle and Late Childhood: 6-11 years of age, elementary school years, fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic are mastered, exposed to culture and world, achievement becomes important, self-control increases Adolescence: Period of transition from childhood to early adulthood, 10-12 years ending at 18-21, rapid changes, dramatic gains in height and weight, body contour, sexual characteristics, pubic and facial hair, deepening of the voice, pursuit of independence thought is more logical, abstract, and idealistic, more time spent outside family Early Adulthood: late teens to early twenties going into the 30s, establishing personal and economic independence, career development, selecting a mate, learning to live with someone, starting a family Middle Adulthood: Starts at 40 years to 60. Expanding personal and social involvement and responsibility, assisting the next generation in becoming competent, mature individuals Late Adulthood: Longest span of any period of development, number of people in this group is increasing dramatically, have substantial potential for physical and cognitive fitness, retain much of their cognitive capacity, and can develop strategies to cope with the gains and losses of aging (60-85). Oldest old show considerable loss in cognitive skills, experience an increase in chronic stress and are more frail, OLDEST OLD HAVE LIMITES IN THEIR FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY, help is needed to improve their lives Concept of Age: -Age and Happiness: Some research says adults get happier with age, difference in happiness for different ages, show a U shape with a dip in the 30s and 40s. Most show happier as they age, older people are more content with the lives, relationships, and experience they have. -Conception of age: Age can be defined in various ways, five ways psychologies define age is: Chronological age: the number of years that have elapsed since a persons birth, many people consider chronological age synonymous with the concept of age, a persons age doesnt cause individuals development, but the experiences and events accumulating do

Biological age: a persons age in terms of biological health, knowing the functioning of a persons vital organs and capacities, younger the bio age, the longer the person is expected to live regardless of chrono age Mental age: an individuals ability to solve problems on a standardized instrument compared with others of the same chronological age. A childs mental age can be measured with IQ, Binet first developed it to find appropriate academic teaching processes Psychological age: an individuals adaptive capacities relative to those of other individuals of the same chronological age, older adults who continue to learn may be more flexible and motived, helps emotional control and lucid thinking, individual has more strategies for life, compared against people of same chrono age but cant adapt well Social age: refers to the social roles and expectations related to a persons age, ex mother, when predicting womans behavior, theres a difference between a 3 year old child mom compared to a 20 year old, we are becoming an age-irrelevant society

Issues with Life-Span Development: Is development primarily influenced by biological inheritance NATURE or environmental influences and experiences NURTURE? Nature-nurture issue: Involves the extent to which development is primarily influenced by nature and nurture. Nature: Is an organisms biological inheritance; nurture to its environmental experiences, says that Nature is more important Nurture: Claims that environmental experiences are the more important influence. Humans grow in orderly ways before being influenced by the environment. Proponents of the importance of nature acknowledge that extreme environments those that are psychologically barren or hostile can depress development. Basic growth is programmed into humans.

Experiences run the gamut from the individuals biological environment to the social environment. Development of the brain is driven by genetic makeup, growth of dendrite branches and synapses are linked t environmental stimuli. Teen brain has a massive development from both factors. Continuity and Discontinuity: focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative changes (continuity) or distinct changes (discontinuity). Continuity: A child speaking, developing gradually to do so, so is puberty Discontinuity: Caterpillar develops into a butterfly, becomes another organism, discontinuous development, child learns to think abstractly, a qualitative discontinuous change in development, not quantitative Stability and change: Which addresses whether development is best described by stability or change. The stability-change issue involves the degree to which we become older renditions of our early experience or, instead, develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier point in development. Will an antisocial child be the same in the future? We can be stable because of some kind of stress that stuck with us since younger, or were born with a stress and it stays with us forever. We can also change because of the plasticity, the potential for change that exists throughout our life span. Adults show less capacity for learning but keep up their old habits. Evaluating the Developmental Issues: Most life-span developmentalists recognize that extreme positions on the issues of nature/nurture, continuity/discontinuity, and stability/change are unwise. Some Contemporary Concerns: -Research is a major focus, for example: -Geriatrics, Fitness, Nutrition, Mental Health, Stress, and Dementia are all major factors of health & well-being. Education: Research focuses on many issues including:

-Cirriculum development: ensure currency and knowledge base for the gifted and mentally challenged, bullying in schools, drop-out rates, approaches to education, the influence of computer use on the brain Socio-Cultural Contexts: -Culture: Behavior patterns, beliefs & other products of a group are passed on from generation to generation, results from the interaction of people over many years, can be as big as a country or small as an island -Cross-cultural studies: involved a comparison of a culture with one or more other cultures. The comparison provides information about the degree to which development is similar, or universal, across cultures or is instead culture-specific. One style of parenting works for one type of culture but not the other -Ethnicity: Based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language, diversity also exists within each ethnic bank -Race: Classification based on real or imagined biological characteristics, it is controversial -Gender: is the socio-cultural dimension of being male or female, women seem generally more depressed, 67 percent of women over 25 have never gone to school, beating women is common outside first world countries, 84 percent of spousal violence is where the women are victim compared to 16 percent male Social Policy: -National governments course of action designed to influence the welfare of its citizens, responsive to demographics such as median age, life expectancy, immigration rates, fertility rates, gender, and sexual orientation. -The shape and scope of social policy is strongly tied to our political system. Countrys political agenda and the welfare of the nations citizens are influenced by demographics, the values held by individual lawmakers, and the nations economic strengths and weaknesses , and partisan politics. Research Methods & Challenges:

Quantitative components: a collection of data in a numerical form and provides statistical analysis. how many, how strong is association of variables? Qualitative components: a collection of data that provides descriptive and inferential information, why and what FOUR STEPS: The Scientific Method: Conceptualize a process or problem to be studied: Theories: Form a study, draw on hypothesis, theory is an interrelated, coherent set of ideas that help explain and make predictions. Hypotheses are specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine their accuracy. Methods of Collecting Data: Observation: Have to be systematic, know what you are observing, Laboratory research offers control: Offers a controlled setting where many to the complex factors of the real world are absent. Drawbacks: impossible to research without the participants knowing theyre being observed, lab setting is unnatural and participants may behave unnaturally, people who are willing to participate may not come from diverse backgrounds, people who are unfamiliar might be intimidated by the lab setting Naturalistic observation: means observing behavior in real-world settings, making no effort to manipulate or control the situation, museum parents feel like they should educate boys more than girls Survey & Interview: Interview them directly, survey is a standard set of questions observing their self-reported attitudes and beliefs, good survey has unbiased questions, one problem is surveys and interviews bad point is that people may only answer in socially acceptable answers and not what they truly feel Standardized test: Has uniform procedures for administration and scoring, compare a persons performance with that of other people, IQ tests, they assume a persons behavior is consistent and stable, yet personality and

intelligence can vary with the situation, a person may have a low IQ on a test but score higher when less anxious Case Study: an in-depth look at a single individual, when that individual cant be duplicated, may get interviews and medical records, provides a dramatic, in-depth portrayal of an individuals life, involves judgment of unknown reliability, dont check if other researchers agree or not Physiological measures: ex. As puberty unfolds, blood levels of a certain hormone increases, so to measure it blood samples are taken from adolescent volunteers, neuroimaging and MRI are used to get images of a persons brain tissue and biochemical activity. Research Designs: Descriptive research: Goal is to observe and record behavior, ex. If people are altruistic or aggressive toward each other, it cant reveal all but some important information can be gotten. INCLUDE: OBSERVVATION, SURVEYS AND INTERVIEWS, STANDARDIZED TESTS, CASE STUDIES, LIFE-HSITORY RECORDS Correlational Research: Goal to establish relationships between variables and make predictions, provides information that will helps us predict how people will behave, the goal is to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics, Experimental Research: Goal is to identify casual relationships, carefully regulated procedure in which one or more factors believed to influence the behaviors being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant. Manipulate one or more variables and observe effects on behavior, which makes the manipulated factor the cause, descriptive and correlational research cannot establish cause and effect because they do not involve manipulating factors in a controlled way Independent and dependent variables: independent variable is manipulated, influential, experimental factor, can be a cause, dependent variable is a factor that can change in an experiment in response to an independent variable Experimental and control groups: a group whose experience is manipulated is an experimental group. Control group is a comparison group which is kept the same, a baseline.

Random assignment: important principle for deciding whether each participant will be placed in the experimental group or the control group, left to change, decreases pre-existing differences

Time Span of Research: Cross-sectional approach: individuals of different ages are compared at one time, can do IQ, memory, peer relations of groups of different ages at the same time, researcher doesnt have to wait until a certain group becomes older, gives no information about how individuals change or are stable, hills and valleys of growth get obscured Longitudinal approach: a research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over a time period, usually several years or more, gives stability and change info, expensive and time consuming, participants drop out or become biased, or conform to the study Sequential approach: is the combined cross-sectional, longitudinal design. Individuals of different ages followed through time, then a new group is used and after a month tested again, retesting may improve performance, complex, expensive and time consuming, helpful in examining cohorts effects in life-span development. Cohort effect: due to a persons time of birth or generation but not the actual age, ex growing up in the same city at the same time, differ in years of education, child-rearing practices, health, attitudes toward sex, religious values, and economic status, important when considering adult intelligence, longitudinal studies get one cohort, cross-sectional get several and jumble Research Challenges: Conducting Ethical Research; Informed consent: All participants must know what their research participation will involve and what risks might develop. Even after informed consent is given, participants must retain the right to withdraw from the study at any time for any reason. Confidentiality: Researchers are responsible for keeping all of the data they gather on individuals completely confidential and, when possible, completely anonymous.

Debriefing: After the study has completed, participants need to be informed of the purpose and the methods that were used, in most cases, experimenter can inform participants in a general manner beforehand about the purpose of the research w/o leading participants to behave in a way they think the exp is expecting. Deception: Not letting the participants know because it may change the outcome, but they have to let them know in the end, and they have to be safe, and let participants know of the potential fallout. Minimizing Bias: Gender Bias: Ex. Orchestras assumed women didnt have the strength and stamina to play in orchestras, Florence Denmark argues gender differences are unduly magnified, Ethnic and cultural bias: ethnic development and educational problems have been viewed as confounds or noise in the data, ethnic gloss makes a group look more homogenous than it really is, it conceals the diversity or gets non-representative data, WHO notes the lack of research in third world countries The Canadian Psychological Association (CPA): publishes and periodically updates ethical guidelines for both clinical and research psychologists in this country, say in 2000 that a psychologist is to respect the dignity of all persons with whom they come in contact with as their role as a psychologist

Lecture 2: The Cognitive Approach

Evaluating the Cognitive Approach: Contributions: -Positive view of development

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Criticisms: -Skeptisms about the prueness of Piagets stages: four stages of development, for piaget all ages were alike, he was -Inadequate attention give to individuals variations in cognitive development -Inadequate description of developmental changes in cognition -Not enough credit given to unconscious thought Behavioural and Social Cognitive Theories: Behaviorism: only what can be directly observed & measured can be studied scientifically, Plato only had his ideas but Aristotle was about to prove by observation, for behaviorists it has to be observable -Development is observable behaivour learned thorugh experience -Development is not stage-like Pavlovs Classical Conditioning: Skinners Operant Conditioning: -Consequences of behavior change likelihood of behaviors future occurrence Found operant conditioning, not rewarding is a punishment, which can change the occurrence of that behavior in the future, scheduled reinforcement: random reward reinforces the behavior (ex. Unstoppable gambling) Banduras Social Cognitive Theory: -behaviour, environment, and cognition: are key factors in development -all three reciprocally influence eachother -people form cognitive representations of blank behavior and bank them for future use -how people motivate and regulate their behavior and gain competency, we can use performance feedback to improve our skills,

Evaluating the Behavioral and Social Cognitive Approach: Criticisms: Insufficient emphasis on cognitive (Pavlov and Skinner), overemphasis on environmental determinants Ethological Approach: -Focuses on responses to environment, physiological makeup, communication, and evolutionary aspects, (ex. Charles Darwin observing animals), animal behavior might help understand human being behavior Charles Darwin: Evolution and natural selection, Konrad Lorenz: imprinting, classified animals and their behavior, found imprinting when several types of bird species follow whatever they were first exposed to (later found that 12-17 hours during brain development (critical period), which writes a mother into the brains of the birds). John Bowlby: Attachment: Between the baby and the mother or a piece of the mother which makes them feel secure, it is also culturally balanced Humanistic Approach: Carl Rogers: Client-entered therapy: The relationship with the psychologist and the client is very important, the psychologist must get involved with the client Congruence: Relationship between ones ideal self & ones perceived self Abraham Maslow: -Believed we are not inherently good or bad, we need to reach this balance from the hierarchy of needs, we need to fill different levels of needs to reach self-actualization Homeostasis: Reach a balance Mesosystem: Interaction between the social systems Exosystem: Friends of family, mass media Macrosystem: Attitudes and ideologies of the specific culture

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